Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.

After moving with her mother and deaf brother to Grandma's small Georgia town in the 1960s, Alice copes with feelings of isolation by befriending the elderly black woman who lives next door.

"Claudie is traveling from Harlem to Georgia with Mama and Cousin Sidney to meet her grandmother and cousins for the first time. She hopes that learning her family's story will inspire her for the variety show she's planning to raise money to save the boardinghouse her family lives in. Claudie's grandmother tells her a legend from slavery times called 'The People Could Fly.' In it, an old man whispers magic words, and the enslaved people grow wings...